A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
“And not a single coin are they donating,” said Dina.
“That’s not surprising. Pity can only be shown in small doses. When so many beggars are in one place, the public goes like this” – he put his fists to his eyes, like binoculars. “It’s a freak show. People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars.”
Maneck studied Beggarmaster’s excessive chatter, his attempt to hide his heartache. Why did humans do that to their feelings? Whether it was anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put something else forward in its place. And then there were those who pretended their emotions were bigger and grander than anyone else’s. A little annoyance they acted out like a gigantic rage; where a smile or chuckle would do, they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was dishonest.
“Also,” said Beggarmaster, “the public apathy you are witnessing illustrates an important point. In this business, as in others, the three most crucial things are location, location, and location. Right now, if I move these beggars from Vishram to a major temple or a place of pilgrimage, the money would come flowing in.”
Shankar’s body lay on a fresh bamboo bier outside the Vishram’s back door, next to a storage shed containing plates, utensils, spare stoves, and fuel. Beggarmaster explained that the face was not left uncovered for the mourners to see because the sight was unbearable. A sheet concealed the mutilated corpse, and over the sheet, a blanket of fresh flowers: roses and lilies.
Gazing at the bier, Maneck wondered if Avinash’s parents had started his funeral procession from the morgue. Or was it permitted to take the body home for prayers? Probably depended on the state of decomposition, and how long it would keep at room temperature. In the unrefrigerated world. Where everything ended badly.
“It’s nice of the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel to let Shankar lie here before the funeral,” said Dina.
“Nice nothing. I paid the cook and waiter handsomely.” Beggarmaster craned to look through the window, and waved at four men who had just arrived. “Good, we can start now.”
The four men were porters from the railway station hired to carry the bier. “I had no choice,” he explained regretfully. “I’m the only relative. Of course I will shoulder my brother from time to time, to honour him, but I cannot allow any of the beggars. They’re not strong enough. Whole thing might come crashing down.”
He had spared no expense for Shankar, purchasing the best ghee and incense, and mountains of sandalwood. It was all waiting at the cremation site, along with a well-qualified mahapaatra to perform the funeral rites. There were baskets of rose petals for the mourners to shower the bier during the long walk. And after the death ceremonies, Beggarmaster would make a donation to the temple in Shankar’s name.
“There’s only one thing worrying me,” he said. “I hope the other beggars don’t assume this is standard procedure, that they will each get the same lavish farewell.”
The slowest-moving procession ever to wind its way through city streets started towards the cremation grounds just after four. The great number of cripples kept it at a snail’s pace. The deformities of some had atrophied their bodies, reducing them to a froglike squat: they swung along using their arms as levers. A few could only manage the sideways shuffle of a crab. Others, doubled over, crawled forward on their hands and feet, their behinds raised in the air like camels’ humps. By a tacit consensus, the cortège proceeded at the lowest common velocity, but their spirits were high as they laughed and chatted among themselves, enjoying a new experience, so that it seemed more a festival than a funeral.
“It’s very sad,” said Dina disapprovingly. “There is a death but no mourning. And Beggarmaster is not even telling them to behave properly.”
“What do you expect, Aunty,” said Maneck. “They are probably envying Shankar.” And anyway, he thought, what sense did mourning make? It could be himself on that bier and the world would be no different.
Beggarmaster drifted up and down the length of the column like a line monitor, making sure there were no avoidable delays. Dina beckoned to him as he approached the tail end of the procession. “Neither Maneck nor I have ever been to a Hindu funeral,” she confessed. “What should we do when we get there?”
“Nothing,” said Beggarmaster. “You are honouring Shankar by just being there. The pujari will perform the prayers. And I will have to light the pyre and break the skull at the end, since Shankar does not have a son.”
“Is it hard to watch? Someone told me there is a very strong smell. Can you actually see the flesh burning?”
“Yes, but don’t worry, it’s a beautiful sight. You will come away feeling good, feeling that Shankar has been properly seen off on his continuing journey. And, I hope, not needing a platform anymore. That’s the way I always feel after watching a burning pyre – a completeness, a calmness, a perfect balance between life and death. In fact, for that reason I even go to strangers’ cremations. Whenever I have some free time, if I see a funeral procession, I just join it.”
He hurried now to the front of the column to placate some disgruntled policemen. The sluggish funeral march was annoying the traffic constables, who felt the tempo was all wrong. “Keep Moving” was their one credo in life, and they had a phobia about anything in slow motion, whether it was cars, handcarts, pariah dogs, or people. If they made an occasional exception, it was for cows. Anxious to get the mourners through at a healthy clip, they waved their arms, tooted their whistles, shouted and pleaded, gesticulated, grimaced, clutched their foreheads, and shook their fists. But these tried-and-true methods were employed in vain: absent limbs could not respond, no matter how piercing the whistle or vigorous the wave.
The railway porters, accustomed to fast trotting with heavy luggage, also had trouble adjusting to the unorthodox pace. Whenever the chants of “Ram naam satya hai!” began to fade behind them, they realized they had raced too far ahead, and called a halt till the gap was closed.
Halfway to the cremation grounds, after an hour’s inching along, a small contingent of helmeted riot police charged the cortège without warning, swinging their sticks. Shankar’s corpse rolled off the bier as the porters swerved to avoid the blows. Screaming in terror, the beggars tumbled to the ground. Rose petals scattered from half a dozen baskets, and a delicate puddle of pink spread across the road.
“See? This is why I was afraid to let you go,” said Dina, panting as she and Maneck ran to the safety of the pavement. “These are bad times – trouble can come without warning. But what is wrong with the stupid police? Why are they beating up the beggars?”
“Maybe they are grabbing people for another work camp. Like they took Ishvar and Om.”
Then, just as abruptly, the troops withdrew. Their commanding officer sought out Beggarmaster and apologized profusely for violating the sanctity of the occasion. “I myself am a prayerful man, and most sensitive to religious matters. This is a very unfortunate mistake. All due to faulty intelligence.”
He said a report had been received on the wireless that a mock funeral was underway, intended to make some kind of political statement, which would most definitely have contravened Emergency regulations. Suspicion had been aroused, in particular, by the assembly of so many beggars, he explained. “They were mistaken for political activists in fancy dress – troublemakers indulging in street theatre, portraying government figures as crooks and criminals embarked on beggaring the nation. You know the sort of thing.”
“An understandable mistake,” said Beggarmaster, accepting the explanation. He was more upset with the people who had prepared the bier – they must have been very careless while tying down Shankar’s body, for it to slide off so easily. At the same time, he reasoned, it was not entirely their fault, they probably had little experience in readying remains as segmented as Shankar’s.
Still squirming with embarrassment, the commanding officer continued to apologize. “Soon as we
“Thank you,” said Beggarmaster, shaking hands.
“Trust me, heads will roll for this blunder,” promised the commanding officer, while his men hurried to retrieve the one which already had: off the bier and into the road, along with a few other body parts.
To make up for the debacle, he insisted on providing an official entourage for the rest of the way. The riot squad was ordered to reassemble the bier and refill the beggars’ baskets with the rose petals strewing the asphalt. “Don’t worry,” he assured Beggarmaster. “We’ll soon have everyone marching shipshape to the cremation grounds.”
As the procession cleared the scene of the ambush, a car stopped by the kerb and honked. “Oh no,” said Dina. “It’s my brother. He’s probably on his way home from the office.”
Nusswan waved from the back seat and rolled down the window. “Are you part of the procession? I didn’t know you had any Hindu friends.”
“I do,” said Dina.
“Whose funeral is it?”
“A beggar’s.”
He began to laugh, then stopped and came out of the car. “Don’t make jokes about serious matters.” Must be a fairly important person, he imagined, to have a police escort. Some high-up from the Au Revoir corporation, maybe – chairman or managing director. “Come on, stop teasing, who is it?”
“I told you. It’s a beggar.”
Nusswan opened and shut his mouth: opened, in exasperation, then shut, in horror, becoming aware of the procession’s character. He realized she was not joking.
Now the mouth was open again, in speechlessness, and Dina said, “Shut it, Nusswan, or a fly will get in.”
He shut it. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. “I see,” he said slowly. “And all these beggars are – friends of the deceased?”
She nodded.
A dozen questions crossed his mind: Why a funeral for a beggar? With a police escort? And why was she attending, and Maneck? Who was paying for it? But the answers could wait till later. “Get in,” he ordered, opening the car door.
“What do you mean, get in?”
“Come on, don’t argue. Get in, both of you. I’m taking you back to your flat.” His list of grievances, compiled over thirty years, flashed through his mind. And now this. “You’re not walking another step in the procession! Of all things – going to a beggar’s funeral! How low can you sink? What will people say if they see my sister –”
Beggarmaster and the commanding officer approached them. “Is this man bothering you?”
“Not at all,” said Dina. “He’s my brother. He is just offering condolences for Shankar’s death.”
“Thank you,” said Beggarmaster. “May I invite you to join us?”
Nusswan faltered. “Uh … I’m very busy. Sorry, another time.” He slipped inside the car, hurriedly pulling the door shut.
They waved and went to regain their places, not that there was much catching up to do; the column had barely moved another dozen metres. Beggarmaster went to the front and reshouldered the bier from one of the railway porters.
“That was fun,” said Dina to Maneck. “He’ll be having bad dreams tonight, I think. Nightmares of funeral pyres – his reputation going up in smoke.”
Maneck smiled, but his thoughts were of the other cremation, three days ago. Where he should have been. Where the generational order of dying was out of joint. Avinash’s hollow-cheeked father would have lit the pyre. Crackle of kindling. Smoke smarting the eyes. And fingers of fire teasing, playing, tickling the corpse. Causing it to arch, as though trying to sit up … a sign, they said, the spirit protesting. Avinash used to often arch like that when playing chess, lying back, almost flat on the bed, turning his head sideways, contemplating the board. Rising on his elbow to reach the piece, to make his move.
Checkmate. And then the flames.
Time passed slowly, as though it had lost interest in the world. Dina dusted the furniture and the Singers in the corner of the room. Nothing so lifeless as silent sewing-machines, she thought.
She busied herself with the quilt again. Straightening a seam, trimming a patch, adjusting what did not look right to her eye. The afternoon sun through the ventilator glass dappled the squares in her lap.
“Move it a little to your left, Aunty,” said Maneck.
“Why?”
“I want to see how the yellow bit looks with circles of sunlight.”
Clicking her tongue, she obliged.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“Remember how doubtful you were the first time you saw it?”
He laughed self-deprecatingly. “I had no experience with colours and designs in those days.”
“And now you are a big expert, right?” She hauled the opposite corner into her lap.
“Will you spread it on your bed when it’s done?”
“No.”
“Are you planning to sell it then, Aunty?”
She shook her head. “Can you keep a secret? It’s going to be Om’s wedding gift.”
He couldn’t have been more pleased if he had thought of it himself. His face went soft, touched by her intention.
“Don’t look so hurt,” she said. “I’ll make one for your wedding as well.”
“I’m not hurt, I think it’s a superb idea.”
“But don’t go blabbing to Ishvar and Om the minute you see them again. I’ll finish it when tailoring resumes, after we get new cloth from Au Revoir. Not a word till then.”
Maneck’s exams concluded; he felt he had done quite badly on most of them. He prayed that the marks would at least be good enough to get him into the three-year degree programme.
Dina asked how he had fared, and he answered “Fine.”
She heard the lack of conviction in his voice. “We’ll have to wait for the results, to see how fine.”
On the last evening, goaded by Dina, he surrendered to the pleas in his mother’s letter and finally went to visit his relatives. He spent two hours enduring the gushing Sodawalla family and fending off a dozen different types of snacks and cold drinks. “Thank you, but I’ve already eaten.”
“Next time, you must come with an empty stomach,” they said. “We want the pleasure of feeding you.” They put away the snacks and tried to make him join them for a cinema show and late dinner, inviting him to stay the night.
“Please excuse me, I should leave now,” said Maneck when he felt he had done his time. “I have to start early tomorrow.”
Back in Dina’s flat, he accused her of ruining his evening. “I’m never going again, Aunty. They talk non-stop, and behave like silly children.”
“Don’t be mean, they are your mother’s family.”
She helped to take down his empty suitcase from the top of the cupboard, then dusted it for him. Watching him pack, she interrupted often with advice, reminders, instructions: don’t forget, take this, do that. “And most of all, be nice to your parents, don’t get into any arguments with them. They have missed you so much this year. Enjoy your vacation.”
“Thank you, Aunty. And please don’t forget to feed the cats.”
“Oh yes, I’ll feed them. I’ll even cook their favourite dishes. Shall I serve with cutlery, or do they eat with fingers?”
“No, Aunty, save the cutlery for your daughter-in-law. She’ll be here in three weeks.”
She threatened to spank him. “Trouble is, your mother didn’t do it often enough when you were small.”
Early next morning he hugged her and was gone.
The return of solitude was not quite as Dina expected it to be. These many years I made a virtue of inescapable reality, she thought, calling it peace and quiet. Still, how was it possible to feel lonely again after living alone most of her life? Didn’t the heart and mind learn anything? Could one year do so much damage to her resilience?
For the umptee
The days shuffled along unhurriedly. She decided this was a good opportunity to give the flat a thorough going-over. In every room she heard the echoes of the tailors’ tireless banter, haunting her while she scoured the kitchen, swept the ceilings with the long-handled broom, cleaned the windows and ventilators, washed all the floors.
In Maneck’s room she found his friend’s chess set in the cupboard. To be returned when college reopens, she assumed.
Next, her own cupboard was emptied out, all but the bottommost shelf. She wiped the interior, stacked the Au Revoir remnants, and sorted her clothes. The things she did not wear anymore went in a separate pile. To offer to Om’s wife. Depending, of course, on her size. And what type of person she turned out to be.
Then Dina tackled the bottommost shelf, crammed with a year’s worth of the snippets from each sewing day, the tiny bits, useless for anything except stuffing the homemade sanitary pads. She dug her arms in and out tumbled the mountain of fragments, making her laugh aloud. Not even another fifty years of periods would use up so much cotton filling. She stocked a bag with a reasonable amount and prepared to get rid of the rest.
Then she thought of Om’s wife again. Surely her youth and vitality could use a healthy lot of it. Better save it for now, she thought, happily pushing the shreds back onto the shelf.
The spate of cleaning eased the passage of many days. She turned her mind to the verandah, soon to be home for the married couple and the uncle. The tailors’ one bedding roll was insufficient, she decided, and set to making extra sheets and covers out of Au Revoir’s bounty.
The foot treadle of Ishvar’s Singer was hard going for her. She had never worked on this type of model during her sewing years. She switched to Shirin Aunty’s little hand-cranked machine, and it was fun. With every seam she ran off, she said to herself: how fortunate, to have all this cloth for all our needs.